The client questions marketing agencies hear most — and where to send each one

Agencies see the numbers early. You watch pipeline, revenue, sometimes the founder's mood in a Monday call, and after eighteen months of that you know the business better than most of its advisers do. So the questions come. We have had an approach — what do you think? Should I be taking more out of the company? What do people actually do with the money when they sell? You are being consulted because you are trusted and available, not because you are qualified, and it is worth being honest with yourself about the difference. The founder asking about sale proceeds is not making conversation. They are circling a decision worth, quite often, seven figures. What they need is not your gut. It is a name.

Commercial observations are your job. You can say the brand is under-monetised, that churn is eating growth, that a business earning £400,000 in profit with one client at 60% of revenue will terrify any buyer's due-diligence team. That is strategy, and you were hired for it. You can also share facts everyone can look up: that selling shares in a trading company may qualify for Business Asset Disposal Relief at 14% on gains up to a £1 million lifetime limit, versus higher rates without it. What you cannot do is advise on what the founder should do with proceeds, pensions or personal investments — regulated territory — or structure the deal for tax, which belongs to an accountant. Knowing the boundary is not timidity. It is professionalism, the thing you sell.

Three referrals cover nearly every founder conversation you will ever have.

• Exit structuring and extraction — an accountant or tax specialist, engaged twelve months before a sale rather than twelve days.
• Proceeds, pensions, personal wealth — a regulated financial adviser, verifiable on the FCA Register.
• What happens to the shares if the founder dies mid-journey — a will specialist or estate planner; most founders have a shareholders' agreement and no will, which is the wrong way round.

Make each introduction specific: a name, a reason, an email that copies both parties. Agencies on SmartPeer can track those referrals with generated disclosure letters, keeping the helpful-versus-advising line documented. Retainers end. The person who introduced the founder to the adviser who sorted their exit? Remembered forever.